They say never make a big beauty change in the months leading up to your wedding. Chopping your hair, trying a new skin-care routine, or making major color changes are verboten. But apparently, Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy almost defied that proverb the very day before her incredibly high-profile nuptials to John F. Kennedy Jr.
Last summer, I spoke to colorist Brad Johns in the wake of the release of—and loud public response to—the first images from Ryan Murphy’s Love Story series (it profiles the relationship between Bessette and Kennedy). Johns was the coolest colorist of the 1990s. When he opened his eponymous Fifth Avenue salon, it was only eight chairs, and you could find there fashion royalty like Kate Moss and Christy Turlington next to literal royalty. During our time together, I learned all about how he perfectly honed Bessette-Kennedy’s signature “child at the beach” hair color using his proprietary chunking method. It was something the two of them “worked really hard to get right.”
But, he added, it almost didn’t make it to her wedding day. “The day before her wedding, Carolyn came in to see me at the salon,” Johns told me over the phone. “I didn’t know anything about the wedding. I loved her, and she was my friend, but I didn’t know him. She sat down and told me, ‘we have to change my color.’”
He was shocked—even more so, he said, when she followed it up with “I want to go black.” But his response to that was short and sweet: “I told her, ‘I’m not doing that.’”
Bessette-Kennedy shared that she was nervous, adding, “‘something big was happening and I want to look different.’” Still, he refused to do it.
Eventually, the photos of her big day got out—and Johns was relieved he had stayed firm. “I called Carolyn and said, ‘How do you think you would have looked in that Narciso dress with a black bun?’ She was relieved and said she trusted me.”
